"I play to-night the last time. Will you be under the gallery?"
Then he went away. And Helen, among the potted plants, followed a clue to this unexpected significance, that it did not seem to her splendid and natural for Gard, too, to go to the war. It seemed like the hand in the darkness from Rachel's story, the vista where melancholy shapes and fears crouched and hid their faces. She watched him go down Queen Mary Street towards the Common. Morgan Map, striding down from Philip's road, saw him come out, said to himself, referring to the uniform. "It's that organ player! Who next?"—looked up and saw Helen's profile above the plants in the window, and stopped. A moment later he turned and walked back.
In Saint Mary's, that night, the music did not seem to Helen to come down from choir loft as usual, and talk to her familiarly. She could not make it say anything. It stayed up among the organ-pipes; and below, among the pillars and aisles instead, the wind of a coming storm blowing in through the vestibule doors, half open—for the night was heavy and close—took its place, whispered, moaned, and wailed: "You've no idea how black it's growing. Shut the doors and hide." At least, she was only able to make the music say something about going away, and that "if people never meet again, never is a long, long time." She was glad when it was over, and Gard came around and under the gallery. They walked across the yard silently. The night had grown black, the branches tossed, and the leaves fluttered audibly in the darkness over them. They found Morgan walking to and fro in the edge of the light from Mrs. Mavering's window.
"Why, Morgan!"
And Gard saluted, "Lieutenant."
"I want to see you, Nellie. Are you going home?" Then to Gard and his uniform. "Isn't that rather sudden?"
"It's the latest fashion. I report at nine, they say. Good-night."
And Mrs. Mavering, mounting her steps, turned to watch Morgan and Helen, and noted that they, too, walked quite silently still, till they turned the corner in front of Thaddeus's house and disappeared.
Thaddeus sat in the little room behind the drawing-room. At the sound of the rising wind he went to the window, looked out uneasily, and listened. The wind was too loud for him to hear the organ, even if it still were going. But he heard the hall-door open, and so went back contentedly to his newspaper, in which it was stated that a certain officer, in bringing a Confederate flag from a hotel roof in Alexandria, was shot by the hotel-keeper, who in turn was shot by a person accompanying the said officer. Really, people acted with singular earnestness and energy nowadays. He laid down the paper. On the wall opposite, in the gilded oval frame, was the picture of Mrs. Thaddeus Bourn, not in reality a mythical person at all, and yet there was a certain indistinctness in Thaddeus's memory of her—a certain absence of salient points. She had not, perhaps, been characterized by earnestness and energy. But nowadays—
"Don't bother me, Morgan," said Helen, impatiently. They were in the drawing-room, not far from the curtained door.